Who needs expats?

IF CHIEF EXECUTIVES are the monarchs of the corporate world, the cadre of well-paid staff they deploy from head office to oversee operations across the planet are their ambassadors. In the golden era of globalisation, sending an expatriate Western executive to a distant emerging market signalled the place was being taken seriously. That model was starting to feel out of date before covid-19 made foreign travel a misery. As Zoom and remote work have become the norm, is shuffling emissaries across the world even worth it anymore?

Some 280m people live in a country other than their own, often because of their job. Many toil on building sites in the Gulf or mind brats in Manhattan. High-flying expats are the most cosseted of these migrants. Their exalted status, should it need to be pinned down, is secured by snagging a housing allowance, school fees for the brood, annual flights home and a healthy salary bump. Some business folk have turned into perennial business wanderlusters, making a career out of flitting from Mumbai to Abu Dhabi to Lagos.

The business case for expats had started to look stretched in recent years. Moving staff to the ends of the Earth made sense when it was tricky to find globally minded (and English-speaking) employees over there. But globalisation has worked its magic. If an American investment bank...